.
“Is there any evidence for a pause in the long-term global warming rate?” said Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s climate-science unit, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan. “The answer is no. That was true before last year, but it’s much more obvious now.”
silence?
Nobody’s surprised; it’s not news; it’s not controversial any more. ;>}
Here is another link to climate denier Judith Curry, one who admits to receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry along with her university salary in part sourced from the state government.
http://www.desmogblog.com/judith-curry
Ok, I was responding to another Thomas Beyer post denying climate change, but that seems to have been removed just as I was posting the above link.
Gordon, the sources behind Thomas’ assertions on climate change are easily countered through independent watchdogs like Source Watch and DeSmog. I urge you to leave his posts up so people like me can have some fun poking holes in their balloon.
Author
I’m way past the point of accepting Thomas’s denialism on this blog. It’s troll bait. If he wishes to repeat it, it will be deleted. And I’ve told him that.
I would have to agree its better for people to leave silly ideas up so that they can be broken. If we sensor those comments the authors are more likely to believe them.
It is not my denialism. I merely repeat opinion of credible people like Judith Curry or Bjorn Lomborg, widely read and accepted scientists with a huge worldwide following. We cannot accept opinions as a base for policies where we waste billions of tax payers money on questionable policies, such as artificially increasing the price of energy for some alleged temperature drop in 100 years of maybe 0.5 degrees.
If you want a blog for sheep, then please state that. I thought we are having an exchange of ideas and opinions on this blog. As such you must accept opinions that differ from your own, Gord, especially if they are well argued, accepted by millions of others and with links to credible analysis by scientists that happen to disagree with an alleged “consensus”.
Climate “science” is religion.
Just finished Tim Flannery’s latest book, “Atmosphere of Hope” last week. It has some very refreshing clusters of optimism, but also the latest calculations of how uninhabitable the planet will be if we don’t really get cracking on both lowering emissions and looking more seriously at geoengineering.
Flannery suggests that the paid deniers and doubter trolls are having a tough time with the latest observations about warming. They don’t have a scientific leg to stand on, and now after Paris governments are actually starting to change course after a decade of generating obfuscation and placing hurdles in the way of meaningful international climate agreements. Flannery repeatedly mentions Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott in this vein, and had serious doubts about success with COP Paris after the fiasco in Copenhagen. Thankfully, the book was just months out of date as both these leaders are no longer there and Paris seems to be a turning point. No doubt Flannery is happy about these turn of events.
The latest information on wind and solar are very encouraging. It still isn’t enough, but one major hope is the emerging power of competitive economics behind renewables, and the increasing scale of divestment campaigns on investment, pension and endowment funds will snowball. Exxon and Shell may have billions in profits to make them and their shareholders complacent in using their economic mass to branch out into renewables (I would hope in good faith for their future shareholders), but said funds collectively have hundreds of billions, and that is some kinda awesome power of persuasion.
“Atmosphere of Hope” is fairly short but as always is very well referenced. Flannery’s writing is quite easy to read for lay people, but there were a couple of mistakes and grammatical errors (“Breaking” for breaking, and Western Canada is in “northeast” North America) that better proof reading would have corrected. One gets the impression he was a bit rushed.
Still, it’s a great addition for the shelves right beside his other book, “The Weathermakers” which he reviews from a 10-years-later perspective. He was almost always right in his projections a decade ago but was completely shocked that the predicted major changes to the climate are happening a lot faster and deeper. He concluded that the last decade was the most remarkable period of time in climate history in thousands of years because in no other time has so much CO2 and other GHGs been pumped into the atmosphere so quickly prior, and the perfectly understandable Laws of Physics reaction so quick. The pace of change is unprecedented even in geological time.
He disassembles the denier’s claim that even an increase of four degrees C to the planet’s average temperature will somehow result in a tropical Eden in Canada. One of the most remarkable shocks to scientists is not the shift in middle of the average temperature bell curve, but the increase in extreme events at the edges. Two degrees could very well result in 40-degree weeks in summer here (you know what will happen the forests and water supply with that), but with three or four degrees warming you can expect 40+ degree months, not days or weeks. Increasing the average also increases the extremes.
Sustainable urbanism, land planning and energy, and increasingly adaptation, are more important than ever.
…breaking for braking …